The Tainted and the Innocent
by Wildly Obsessed
Summary: Fleeting or forever, his hope is that she will be with him always and his fear is that she will want to do just that. Enter the mind of Edward Cullen: tortured, over contemplative, and surprisingly human. Between the time of Twilight & New moon


**Meet the Masochistic Vampire...**

_It scares me. _

I constantly tell her that _she_ should be more wary of me, that _she_ should not be around me, that _she_ should stay away. I constantly tell her that I am unstable. Capable of disgusting acts. Humourlessly, I find it clear that I have ended up being the frightened one.

No individual had ever captivated my interest in even the briefest of forms. For most of my existence in this life I have barely had acquaintances, and the only friendships I've formed have been of the purely unhuman kind.

I suppose it is my gift of perception that has nullified any curiosity it would be natural to feel towards a stranger. There is no mystery to each glance sent my way and I can hear every thought or feeling before the person them self is capable of interpreting them. Perhaps that is the reason why I've never found women particularly note worthy. So many years of listening to the repeated thought process and registering the same looks (and believe me, it does get repetitive and increasingly less flattering each time) has made me rather bored to tears when it comes to female attention. To be perfectly honest, I believe that the very first reason I became interested in her lied in my inability to read her. The first thing that made me notice her was not something she could control or choose, similarly the very next thing I was drawn to was her scent, also not a conscious ability on her part. It disturbs me that the first things that made me want to know her were not in any relation to her as a person at all.

In the earliest stages of our acquaintance I could tell she, along with everyone else, was dazed at how I could choose her of all people to give attention to.

She is beautiful but it should go without saying that I have seen more glamorous.

She can barely walk straight and my species is essentially defined by grace.

She has all the fragility of glass and all the sustainability of a sunset. Quite amazing while it lasts, but fleeting. I will most likely stay seventeen until the world ends. There is no death, no illness or injury. There is no old age.

She will die. If not in the ways that I fear, then in the natural way her people succumb to.

And she will change. I couldn't care less about the physical aspects, but she will grow. Mature. Her feelings will shift, her desires move on. One day she will wake up and find this situation derisive and nothing I can do will stop her from leaving me forever, finding a new lover. I fully know she will be fine. She will move on. I, on the other hand, will think about her every minute of each day for centuries after she's deserted me.

She worries that I will become bored with how 'ordinary' she is and find someone more like myself but it is precisely in those differences that I cherish her so deeply. I fear more than anything that she will realize how little I deserve her, not the other way around. I am a monster at the core and I am waiting for the day she understands that and runs from me. After all, she is just a little girl. Right now she may be blinded by infatuation, by puppy love, but these feelings are always so shallow and easily overcome in people of her age. It made me warmer than I've ever been to hear her softly tell me that she loves me but does she truly know what love is? Does she understand the concept? Even if she does, am I willing to let her sacrifice so much just so I can be with her for the shortest of times?

It is a poignant story, isn't it? I'm sure they think I am to be envied. Ethereally stunning. Charm beyond resistance. Speed. Strength. Immortality. They pity her because she will grow old and die. But they don't see that she will never have to live a day suffering as I know I will suffer. Her people flicker and extinguish as easily as the flames of a candle. I'm the one that will have to watch her leave me. If I could be granted the gift of eternal peace, I would certainly relinquish immortality. Death is a gift. And Lord, I'm already worrying about the days that are numbered and the moment she will be taken from me. It will happen too soon.

She wants me to turn her. The thought is almost tempting. The danger would disappear, the precautions unnecessary. I could have her… in every sense of the word. The thought intoxicates me so much I can barely stand it. She would be with me forever. I would never have to face the thought of life without her; never have to see her blow out.

That is just a fantasy. I'm not naïve enough to believe that it would really be as perfectly bliss inducing as she seems to be trying to persuade me it will be. I love her more than I love myself and to say yes to this would be undeniably selfish… always in regards to Bella, I am never selfish. I cannot afford to be.

I have been accused of loving her simply because I can't read her, simply because the scent of her can get me high. I have doubted myself on these terms- after all; she is just a human and an underdeveloped child at that. No one of her age has ever given me reason not to internally roll my eyes at their pathetic thoughts and how should she be different? She's not like them but she is still a seventeen year old girl. Was it the challenge? The impossibility of the two of us ever being together that drew me in? Am I just as shallow as those imbecile boys whose thoughts numb my intelligence day by day?

But then she smiles at me. Then she'll say something. She will grasp an idea and understand so thoroughly that I can't help but be blown away. I have an inordinate amount of trust in her and she has never made me doubt her. The girl is as innocent as they come and I was so scared of tainting her… But her nature has it that she refused to turn from me even after I exposed to her every dirty detail of my monstrosities. Perhaps that is a reason why I love her so much- she knows everything about me and loves me anyways. Everything that I loathe about myself, everything that I knew no human would ever be able to tolerate, every disgusting habit that would surely make any decent individual shun me… she has absorbed, filed away, and accepted as part of who I am. She loves me despite it all and the fact that some untouched angel-like creature could even stand to look at me after realizing how demonic I am, much less adore me, is something that still confuses me. She gifted me with her breakable heart and put her life securely in my hands. I shouldn't be allowed to consort with someone like her and sometimes she still confesses that she doesn't feel worthy to be with me.

As I said earlier, I'm scared. She will realize how much better she can do and leave. She will put herself in danger near me as she consistently does and one day I won't be prepared for it and in the quickest of seconds I will have been the one to extinguish her life. She will plead once more with me to turn her and catch me at a moment of weakness and I will do as she wishes, damning her to darkness and ripping away the innocence I so admire. I'm scared of my weakness. I'm scared that I care too much for her and will not be able to go on the day she is inevitably out of my world. I'm scared because I know I love her more than she loves me- it is not possible to love someone more than I love Bella. After a century of feeling nothing but familial love, she has stirred the emotion that has never been felt before. Everyone knows that a first love feels the strongest, lasts the longest, and hurts the most. And imagine having that first love after a century of romantic solitude. This is my first opportunity at this passion and I know it will not fade. I'm scared that this will scare her. I'm scared that nothing I do will be good enough. I'm scared that no safety precaution can save her from the carnal animal I am at my most basic level.

I'm scared of living without her.

I'm scared of a life without her love.

I'm scared.

My obsession with this human has the vague support of my vampire family but if I do resist from turning her, how long will they tolerate my love for someone seen as an inferior creature? And if I do lose her, how long will they let me grieve before becoming so annoyed that they leave me as well? I won't stop grieving if I lose her, that much is certain, and no one is patient enough to willingly spend forever with someone who will do nothing but mourn for days long gone. What scares me once more is that I am willing to lose my family to be with her. If they made me choose between being with them for the rest of my life and having two more years with Bella, the choice wouldn't even be a choice. This frightens me more than words can articulate because I do love my family; I love them as a child would blindly love their parents and siblings. I would do anything to protect them- save for giving up the human. In loving her I have breached security and secrecy and put us all at risk but I can't give her up.

Bella finally awakes and habitually looks up at me with a smile, slowly slipping out of her bed to give me a kiss. We've been doing this for so long now that it's developed into routine. I've become much more accustomed to controlling myself and now I can even tolerate her leaning into my body, if only for a few seconds.

The fact that I've become strong enough to be able to kiss her two or so times a day, even if they are almost pecks, gives me a massive thrill and also a massive chill. I never thought it could be safe for our lips to touch and now that I have mastered it, I worry that I will attempt other things that I once thought impossibly risky. Each day I'm with her, I do things that I warned myself against when we first met. I never even thought we could be in the same room together and now…

So I think about the moment we try new things, the moment I grow complacent and delude myself into thinking it is routine, the moment I let my guard down because it's simply so easy to do so around her… The moment we try something that is much too dangerous and I lose that control, the moment I end up ripping her lovely glass-like body to shreds and kill her in a bloody mess.

Morbid thoughts like this flit into my mind so regularly I probably have a chronic frown hidden behind my smile.

Her eyes linger on me for a moment before she falls into her morning ritual, and she's so comfortable with me now that my presence does not cause her hesitation in her routine. Rosalie snorted that we're becoming like an old married couple and I'd have to say, it is appearing as such.

I wait downstairs for her while she showers and changes, briefly I think of making her breakfast but as I've wryly explained to her even while human I never had to cook for myself so my culinary skills are rather rudimentary.

We banter about trivial things while she eats and suddenly she swallows her latest bite and asks me thoughtfully, "Do you miss food? Real food?"

I answer honestly. "I can barely remember what real food tastes like. Even if I could, what I ate back then is starkly different than your meal of choice now." I eye her cheerio's with a raised eye brow.

Her questions are so random. She craves to know me just as deeply as I want to know her and no detail is insignificant.

She finishes with her cereal and rinses out the bowl. I take it from her hands to dry it and she minutely scowls at me for a moment, ever so resistant to the idea that she can't do it just fine by herself.

"I like to help. It's only polite." I grin, though honestly half the reason I do these things now is because I know she's strangely ruffled by chivalry.

Another thought strikes her and her lips turn up at the corners. She glances at me with her head slightly tilted before she gives her head a small shake and looks away. The small details like that would not drive any other person absolutely insane but not knowing every single thought that flits through her head is something that is still hard to get used to. It fascinates me, of course, but God knows it still makes me impatient as hell.

"What?" I blink at her.

She shakes her head.

My eyes involuntarily roll back and I elbow her. "What?" I prod again.

"Must you know everything at all times?" Bella rolls her eyes right back at me and smirks at my impatience.

"Yes. If I can help it."

She makes the mistake of glancing at my face. I hold her gaze and to my unending amusement, she's 'dazzled' again.

"I was just wondering if, seeing as though you can't taste food, you can taste me when we kiss." Her mouth shuts itself indignantly as she realizes what she voiced and an embarrassed blush creeps across her cheeks. "Stupid eyes." She mutters under her breath.

"I have no taste buds, so to speak. But smell is linked closely to taste and I can...smell you more thoroughly when we kiss so in a way, yes I can taste you. I can taste your scent." She still looks flushed from asking what she deems an inane and childish question so I figure I'll embarrass her further. "Why? Do you taste me?"

"Taste, smell, hear, feel, see."

"A cornucopia of vampire?" I laugh.

"A cornucopia of Edward Cullen." She responds, brushing her fingertips against mine.

"And what do I taste like?"

"What do _I_ taste like?"

"Fair enough, you stubborn mule."

"I'm only stubborn because you're nosy." She huffs, picking up her backpack for school. I reach out my arm in an offer to carry it but she only raises her eyebrows at me derisively before shouldering it. She stuffs her feet into her boots and opens the door, pausing when she realizes I haven't moved from my spot beside the sink.

I pointedly nod towards her front closet. "Aren't you forgetting something?" A chuckle escapes from my lips as it dawns on her that she forgot to put her coat on and she shrugs off the bag and slips into the material.

I offer my arm out again but again she picks up the back pack herself. I sigh but before I can relax my arm back to my side she accepts my proffered hand with hers and I'm electrified by the warmth her small hand passes onto mine.

We walk out to her truck and we both stop in front of the driver's seat. She stares at me until I give up and open the door, waving my arm extravagantly to invite her in. She smugly buckles herself in while I walk around to the passenger's side.

"I still can't believe of all the things you have legitimate cause to be frightened of, you're most concerned about the way I drive." I frown in exasperation.

She smiles slightly and revs up the engine which will make it next to impossible to be heard until we get to school.

"We're taking my Volvo from now on." I grumble, almost yelling to be heard.

"Love me, love my truck." Bella stoutly shouts back, patting the dashboard.

I sigh and settle back into the seat as we pull away from her driveway.

Inwardly, I prayed that if there was a God, He would let me have mornings like these forever.

* * *

**AN:** I'm new to the fandom, having only just recently discovered Twilight. Of course, now I'm obsessed with it and had to write something on it as I am addicted to ff. Possibly a one shot, possibly a chapter fic, depending. 


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